Originally Posted by
av8tordude
If you are furloughed, then you are protected by the CBA to have recall rights. Therefore, you must honor you training contract until a mutual agreement can be reached between you and the company to void repayment of the training contract. If you refuse to return to work when recalled, than they can terminate your furlough status and force you to repay the prorated amount left in your training contract. The only way to not pay this training contract while on furlough is to let time run its course. After 2-years of employment, furloughed or not, you are not obligated to pay the training cost.
See MAIR Holdings v Furloughed Mesaba Pilots in 2005-2006. When the company defaults on the promise of gainful employment, the unemployed are free to seek work elsewhere, even if they resign ahead of the furloughs. The precedent is more or less set here. More to the point of the discussion, feel free to mark me down as another RAH furloughee that is literally nauseous at the idea of coming back to work at the expense of MidEx pilots' jobs. As for the "get behind the union and say 'no'" comment, our union hasn't provided any such guidance. The general disgust that has been floating around message boards from the RAH pilots is independent of any union-related gripe. We may be RJ pukes, but we know a bad deal when we see it.